


room full of frozen faces (and a moment of fractured time)

by inmadhouses



Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied Emotional Infidelity, Implied/Referenced Binge Drinking, Implied/Referenced Substance Abuse, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Parent Problems, Pining, So. Much. Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-09 22:25:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11114148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmadhouses/pseuds/inmadhouses
Summary: From the moment he waltzed into The House of Craic, it was like a bad joke in the making; Harry Styles walked into a bar and immediately he made a mess of Zayn Malik’s life.A friends to lovers type of bar AU.





	room full of frozen faces (and a moment of fractured time)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaddestLoser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaddestLoser/gifts).



He looks like he should hurt, all sharp angles and awkward corners. His wardrobe made of dark colours, deep and rich although they should be faded by now; t’ shirts with inexplicable holes in them and worn out jeans that are hastily patched. He doesn’t look gentle or sweet or kind, and yet he is. All curls in his hair, pink lips, and bright, round eyes.

He smiles a lot and laughs even more, and as soon as he walks in through the front door, the world comes to life. As though his presence alone fills the room with warmth and light.

And it’s as frustrating as it is irksome because that is all that occupies Zayn’s mind anymore.

When he’s in the dank lane behind the bar and the thud thud of the latest party banger reverberates through the dingy alley, Zayn practically tastes the Vodka Cranberry on his lips as they share a cigarette. His eyes is sparkling and his is smile lopsided as if he is drunk on pure liquid joy, no diluent needed, and they stay there, a cigarette between them, until the door is shoved open and Niall comes tumbling out groaning about ice.

When he’s behind the counter during a busy night and the customers are practically throwing themselves at him, Zayn sees his lips play a tug of war between a smirk and a scowl. There’s almost stars in his eyes in those moments that it makes Zayn’s insides feel like they’re ready to explode. But then his gaze shifts over from across the room and his green eyes trace the outline of his brown ones and he knows he can see him looking, and it is a little reckless and a little dangerous, but he can’t look away. It makes something bubble up inside and he can’t stop it.

When he’s doing the crossword puzzle at closing time, elbows on the bar counter, Zayn feels the breath on his ear when he whispers the answer passing by him with a mop in hand, half arsedly mopping up the grimy inexplicably stained floors. He looks at the incomprehensible golden boy, his muscles under the rolled sleeves of his shirt, his pale skin, the purple and blue veins underneath, and he’s breathless.

"What?" Zayn blinks, barely able to form a coherent thought let alone a sentence at this point.

"It’s millinery," the curly haired brunette repeats himself.

_Who in the world know what the other word for hat making is?_

Apparently one Harry Styles, because he takes one peek at the crossword that Zayn has spent twenty minute staring at and whispers it right into his ear nonchalantly sending shivers up his back and electricity jolts misfiring in his brain.

His a little more than adorably overgrown locks is lazily tied up and off his face, his skin is slick from the warmth of the bar mixed with all the drinks he’s poured (for the patrons and himself) and his eyes are drooped lazily. Unlike Zayn, Harry has no problems partaking on the job. And why should he since his presence accounts for half of those who come into _The House of Craic_ anyway.

He personally hates it; the name, the acronym, and the way that the kids who stumble into the bar snigger about said acronym after they blaze one up just outside the bar. But Niall did pay for most of the work that needed to be done, so he's technically the majority stakeholder and it’s really only fair that he gets to ignore every sensible adult who insists that naming a bar located not in Amsterdam,  _THC,_ is a terrible idea.

Harry takes a final swig of the Vodka Cranberry he’s poured himself right after last call and Zayn isn’t quite sure what his life is anymore.

It's all too much and not enough at the same time, and nothing quite makes sense.

It began somewhere around a year ago. 

Niall was twenty-two, somewhat broke, and a washed up golfer with a bum knee just kind of existing. Zayn was twenty-three, flat out broke, and living paycheck to paycheck but he wrote a book that was mildly successful that one time so his royalties are still kind of coming in. Liam was twenty-three and incredibly broke because law school cost so bloody much that he dropped out, never got his degree, and was kind of still in debt for a diploma he never received.

So when Zayn's uncle passed and left him an old bar with peeling walls and perpetually stained floors, he decides it's time to actually do something with his life, and collectively their lives. They use Niall’s remaining savings from his golf days to redo the place and it all happens so fast, like slipping on ice and suddenly in the space of a breath your eyes are closed and you're bracing for the fall.

Harry turns up six months in when they were just about to throw in the towel because they have no idea what they're doing and like a some kind of a good luck charm who eats his weight in pork crackling and double that in Vodka Cranberry, business starts to trickle in. He racks up a bar tab so high that Louis, their (equally broke) friend slash accountant who can’t hold a job down longer than a few months suggests letting him work at the bar for free when they reach an impasse at the end of one particular tight month discussing how to settle said bar tab.

He takes the offer and kind of just starts showing up to work off his debt (and accruing a higher due as he goes); serving drinks, swishing a wet mop around after closing time, joking with actual paying patrons, and just generally filling a space they never even knew needed filling.

Watching him move around effortlessly with some kind of unwritten grace, Zayn is absolutely transfixed.

And that’s when the realisation punches him in the gut.

It’s all consuming; shocking his mind, numbing his limbs, freezing him to the core. Because it’s real and it’s familiar and it’s as though he’s known Harry his whole life. As if loving him is as right as breathing. The benign smile that’s been playing on his lips turns into laughter because his stomach is in knots and his throat tightens and he doesn’t really know what to do.

Margaux appears out of nowhere swaggers up to him with both their coats in hand and he stops laughing in an instant, a blanket of something enveloping him.

"You ready to go, babe?"

Her smile is genuine and warm. He blinks and snaps his gaze over to her, clearing the muffled thoughts that are fighting to make itself known.

"Yeah," he says, dropping the crossword on the bar top, "Yeah, let’s go."

No real excitement thrums in his voice although he is addressing his girlfriend of two years and Harry is looking over with worry in his eyes and a line between his furrowed brows.

They’d go home, the two of them, back to the tiny apartment where they eat and sleep and go about their lives, together but apart in a tiny shoebox of an apartment. When she moved in, she’d brought over an empty picture frame and they ceremoniously hung it on the wall.

"It can be anything we want," she said.

It’s been nineteen months since they moved in together. They were stupid and broke and been together barely a few months. But sometimes when he can’t sleep and his brain is a wall he repeatedly runs into bruising his muscles and his muscle and marrow all the same, he’d get up and walk around. He’d look at the empty frame on the wall and thinks to himself that this is where he loved her. 

It feels like yesterday and forever ago. His heart feels so swollen with guilt that he feels he could break a rib.

Zayn tosses the bars’ keys over at Harry, "You know what to do?"

It’s not a question. Not really. More of a statement. An unheard plead for things to go back to before he felt his hairs stand on its ends and goosebumps erupt when Harry whispered into his ear. His green, green eyes, stares deep into Zayn’s cocoa coloured ones, and it’s almost like he’s at a loss for words.

Almost like he’s lost himself too.

And then, "If there’s a dashing brunette waiting out front for me, tell ‘em I’ll be done in five."

He winks at them with his patented smirk plastered on.

"And are we expecting this dashing brunette to be male or a female this time?" Margaux teases.

Zayn’s fingertips tingle. He can’t even feign disinterest in the conversation, not when every atom in his body is screaming in vain. His pulse is beating erratically as though some kind of beast is on the loose causing involuntary panic and mayhem in his veins.

"You know I don’t discriminate."

Another wink.

A pang of something a lot like jealousy sweeps through him. They turn to leave, Margaux shaking her head with a wry smile on her lips while the ache in his bones, the unshakable longing makes his fingertips tingle.

A discreet glance thrown hastily over the shoulder reveals an unbelievably smug looking Harry chucking the wet mop into the pail. Zayn feels his insides burn. The shit-eating grin on Harry’s face could power entire cities. And that’s just who he is. From the moment he waltzed into _The House of Craic_ , it was like a bad joke in the making; Harry Styles walked into a bar and immediately he made a mess of Zayn Malik’s life.

.

.

It's like an itch Zayn cannot scratch. And it's driving him insane.

Even the annoying quirks like the way he dances with the damned mop while they're cashing out for the night and the way chows down on pork crackling instead of eating actual meals have become somewhat affable.

He's putting away some glasses when Harry leans over, his body weight on the bar counter and his breath on Zayn's neck, "Do they always argue about English at four in the morning?"

"Almost exclusively," Zayn breathes, his lungs nearly failing him fully with this new proximity thing.

Harry doesn't move from his spot as they continue to watch Louis and Liam bicker about spelling. His body feels warm, like he's swallowed the sun whole, and Zayn decides that this vicinity is pointy, uncomfortable, and strange. It sends fissures of electricity up his spine and he's sure it's not because Louis caught Liam googling and mistyping kidney.

"I'm just saying, you could be more concerned about the reason why I'm looking that up," Liam huffs.

"And I'm just saying, if you're going to google how much you'll get for selling a kidney, you should at least spell kidney right."

.

.

Zayn kicks off his shoes as he enters the apartment. There's a half eaten sandwich on the counter and before he can address its existence by musing out loud if he's slaved all day to come home to a half eaten sandwich, Margaux jumps off the couch, making a mad dash across the room.

"I've been waiting for the hot water to get up since I got home," she yells as her clothes make it to the ground before she's even in the bathroom, "I'm going first!"

"My day was fine by the way," he hollers back as he sits onto the couch, shucking off his coat. He works nights and she works afternoons, so the only time they really have together are the early mornings. They'd eat two pound Tesco meals out of its packaging, normally microwaved pasta, and talk about what it'd be like to be able to afford proper wine and not nearly stale, stolen wine from the bar.

"And how was yours?" He continues on, "Oh, it was good. Is this sandwich with a bite taken off it for me? You know it. Well then, you can have the shower first while I polish it off, it's not like I've been serving sticky pub people all night."

Zayn makes a loud enough show of the two way conversation they didn't have that Margaux sticks her head out of the bathroom with a grin on her face. She's bathed in the yellow glow of their often flickering bathroom light, her dirty blonde ringlets down from the ponytail and lithe body out of the sweater she had on earlier. She's smiling her lovely dirty smile and something anxious and sheepish swells in his chest.

"There's enough space for two, you know."

Before Zayn can respond, fumbling with his words and wondering what it is that he's feeling, his phone rings.

"Hold that thought," he says as she rolls her eyes and reenters the bathroom alone.

Zayn slides his finger across the screen and it's Liam on the other end, calling from the bar landline because apparently, they're drowning.

"I don't know how he did it, but he did it. He went for a Guinness and now we're drowning," Liam all but shouts from the other end of the line.

"We're not fucking drowning," Zayn hears Niall's protest from the background coupled with fizzing noises and loud splashes.

"If you both yell any louder, I'd be able to hear you from my apartment."

Zayn stays on the line as they bicker semantics but two minutes in, he's sure they've forgotten he's still there so he hangs up and rings Harry as he hears the shower creak on and the sound of splashing in his own apartment.

"You're probably naked right now," he announces as soon as he hears the ringer stop, "But the Guinness tap is acting up again and apparently when Niall went for an after work pint, he redecorated the wallpapers with our least expired keg."

Zayn hears a familiar muffled curse. The corners of his lips tug upwards involuntarily. It's the way Harry always curses; under his breath as though he's punch drunk. But it's several tones below his usual register which only strengthens the theory that he is indeed, at current time of call, naked.

And why wouldn't he be considering that he left with a leggy raven haired girl standing by the bar all night even though she'd only nursed that one G&T.

"It's fine," Zayn rushes on, the fist in his stomach curling against itself like a ghost gunshot wound that refuses to heal, "The keg's probably going to be a goner by the time I get back there but I'm sure Liam has things under control."

There's a pause.

"Are you lying?"

His stomach twists further.

Logically, they didn't really need him back there. The keg would run out soon before Harry arrives, and Zayn can handle the clean up with Liam and Niall. Harry could technically show up just in time to tinkle with the tap in the morning before they fit the next keg on. But illogically, well, he can't really process the thought.

"Yes," he responds instantly.

"I’m going to have to steal a car now," Harry declares over the phone, voice slightly muffled by the sound of fabric being pulled over his head.

"Good," Zayn hears himself say out loud.

He hangs up and proceed to pull out the rattiest clothes he could find, putting them on knowing that it'll reek and stain if the Irishman's pick of poison once the night slash morning is over.

The shower squeaks off and Margaux comes out of the bathroom dripping and grumbling about the water and the heater until she realises he's putting clothes on as opposed taking them off.

She crosses her arms, dripping all over their already irretrievably damaged floors.

.

.

"She was always kind of a bitch anyway," Louis says nonchalantly as they all chink glasses together after Zayn convinces them it _really_ is a good thing that his girlfriend left him.

The icy blue stare that shoots from across the room doesn't escape his notice. And it's not that Niall doesn't have a reason to be overprotective, the last breakup he had left him on a two month school hiatus and a three hundred page book manuscript consisting of fifty nine thousand some words. But Zayn did manage to get it sent out to publishers and the incoherent ramblings of a broken heart did eventually go to print, so he calls it even.

The laugh, they joke, and they prep the bar for the day's work and things seem normal. It’s odd, but Zayn is flooded with relief so fast that it almost knocks him over. He doesn’t feel gutted, hollowed out, or as though he’s standing where nothing makes sense and physics defied all laws known to man.

"What happened anyway?" Louis asks later, "I mean, I don’t want to be the guy who calls your ex-girlfriend a bitch only for you to get back together again in a couple of weeks and I’m the arse who called your girlfriend a bitch."

 _It happens, as they imminently always do_ , Zayn thinks.

But he can't seem to be able to explain it. An endless minute passes as they wait for Zayn to say something. He's the one who writes an entire book of nothing. The one who sends out five-paragraph-long texts on birthdays. The one who never backs down from a verbal beatdown whenever the opportunity arises.

Time seems to stretch on and out and up.

There is so much he wants to say but he can’t seem to word it all. He just drowns in Harry's eyes and Harry's face and the room that they’re all standing in, feeling a kind of ease that he didn’t quite feel with her.

"The way these things always happen," he shrugs after a long beat, "We fell out of love."

Nobody questions it further and they fall into their usual pre-opening lull, nursing that one designated drink because ‘come on guys, let’s try to not blow our earnings back into the liquor this month’ seems like a perfectly reasonable request.

It’s not unpleasant and it's a little awkward, but it could worst.

Because at least he didn’t have to admit to anything. Like the fact that being poor is a hell of a lot more more romantic in the films. It’s not curling into one another and holding each other tight during winter because the heater takes thirty minutes to start up, but more of yelling at each other back and forth in the shower because the water turns off occasionally for no apparent reason and not having electricity for weeks at times because one of the bar taps got busted and needs fixing.

Zayn didn’t quite mind it as much, in the beginning. 

But when she sits him down on their couch slash pullout bed and say they need to talk and 'please babe,' he looks at her quietly, waiting until she can articulate herself. He thinks of how ironic is it because when you're twenty-one and have your future all entangled with another, you never think that there'd be this whole different future of rent problems, bill paying problems, and vindictive prayer under the breathe before going into the shower problems.

She says something about him wasting his time and money and effort into that bar that's never going to go anywhere and he doesn't say anything. Partly because he loves her, still, in that far off way that people often do. He loved her when they were together, and he loves her even though they're not anymore. Not technically. Not for ages. But he does still want the best for her. And what's best for her isn't him.

Because part of him has fallen in love with someone else without him noticing.

And the said someone else just so happens to be in the bar and explaining something to Liam, smile bigger than his face and hands gesticulating as he speaks.

"It’s a brilliant idea," Zayn hears him exclaim excitedly.

“We are not having open mic nights at the pub!”

.

.

"Oi, Styles," Niall calls from across the room, guitar already in hand, "You ready?"

The brunette vaults back over the bar and shucks off the hair tie holding the mess of his hair back because Niall-you-either-tie-it-up-or-I’ll-get-you-a-hairnet-Horan insists on not violating any (more) health codes.

He takes one last shot and walks toward the blonde, his hair a little more than adorably overgrown now and fully ready to take on a life of its own.

Both Harry and Niall climb up onto the awkward makeshift stage that doesn’t look like it can support the weight of two grown ass adult men but there it is, a blonde and a brunette on a raised platform calling everyone’s attention.

Stinging feedback, nerve induced jokes and a slightly rocky start aside, the crowd actually looks like they're enjoying themselves to the sound of Niall’s guitar and Harry’s voice. The ringing notes hit the roof and bounce off of every surface, filling the space.

Zayn watches as Harry morphs into someone different. Up on the quasi stage, his shoulders broaden and his voice deepens. His electrifying effect is a constant though, and Zayn is breathless. Watching him with his eyes closed, swaying to the melody perfectly in tune as though someone grafted his bones into pure music. He's only half listening from behind the bar but Harry's voice thrumming from between the chords screams of something halfway between thinly veiled sadness and hope.

It makes his heart hurt.

Liam all but sulks as he serves the drinks for the night. He’s not even actually doing much serving, just sitting atop the polished wood and passing shots of Tequila along, disgruntled because 'it's not technically not an open mic, we're just having shitty cover bands live instead of shitty cover bands on the stereo.'

His pout only got more pronounced when Louis points out that he (the once upon a time law student) got 'lawyered' by a drunk Irishman with a bum knee and a sports science major drop out.

Zayn's on his fourth glass of between drink pouring whiskeys when Harry and Niall are almost done with their planned set. They both play with so much soul and heart and visceral intent that it's a wonder that neither thought to seriously pursue music beyond the confines of the bar.

The thought is then cut short by the knowledge that the moment he gets off stage he’s going to bask in the adoration of whoever wants to shag him senseless.

It feels like a knife to the throat.

Zayn downs his whiskey in a go.

.

.

Louis comes marching into _The House of Craic_ at mid day, ignoring the closed sign and pulling up a stool, "You know—"

"We’re closed," Zayn says, hardly throwing a glance his way as he cleans the glasses behind the bar counter preparing for another uphill battle that is a weekend night.

"I always thought that when I owned the bar, I’d spend at least twice as much time drinking," Louis barrels on without hearing him and reaching for an empty glass that Zayn’s just cleaned and set down, "But now I spend more time cleaning than we do drinking."

Louis reaches for a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar and doesn’t bother to put it away after filling his glass.

"You don’t own a bar, you manage our finances which you're shite at by the way," Zayn says confidently, pulling the bottle towards himself and filling up his own glass with a shot of whiskey too, "You don’t clean nor pay for drinks and based on your inability to hold a job or balance our books, I'd say you've spent more time drunk now than ever."

He says it all in a rather matter of factly manner and without malice. The truth is, everything in _THC_ is a little scraggly and undone but none of them would have it any other way. There is a homeliness to it though and every one of them has at one point walked into the place to find someone taking a quick nap at the bar top or an oddly satisfying shower in the bathroom stall situation.

It’s almost a normal thing, really. Amidst their mish mash collection of helicopter parents with their constant disapproval, absentee parents, parents who would rather throw money at their kid than to actually spend time with them, and the ones six feet under, they’ve all sort of adopted one another.

Louis takes a sip of the amber liquid in cheap crystalline glass, "I’d say we spent about twenty percent of our time drunk before the bar, and after the bar it’s up to about twenty-five. That is a pathetic increase of five percent, hardly groundbreaking."

"And where exactly are you getting these numbers from?" Zayn asks, taking a sip of his drink too.

"Well, on top of being an excellent drunk, I double up as an excellent accountant," Louis smirks cheekily loosening the badly tied tie he hs on, "It’s what you pay me for."

"You’re definitely one of things but not both," Zayn responds confidently before finishing the remainder of his drink and rinsing the glass, "Also, we don’t pay you."

Louis doesn’t even falter at those words, reaching for the liquor bottle to pour himself more whiskey that he’s not about to pay for, “You wouldn’t be able to afford me anyway.”

"We're really not that poor, you're just terrible at your job," Zayn smirks.

Louis fakes his surprise and clutches at his imaginary pearls, "You keep saying that, good sir, I'm gonna have you sued for slander."

Zayn opens his mouth to shoot some kind of a retort about it not being slander if it's true when out of the corner of his eye he sees Harry waltz in with a conspicuous looking bag in hand.

"What d’you got there?"

"I’m being thrifty," Harry explains, stopping short in his tracks, not actually explaining anything at all.

With a sheet of plastic that Zayn assumes to be a makeshift raincoat over his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow and a tie that isn’t on straight ensemble, everything about him screams of something highly suspicious.

And Zayn isn’t the only one who thought so.

"Raining out front, is it?" Louis chimes in, narrowing his eyes at the unusually dressed and groomed brunette.

For the first time ever, Harry seems to squirm under pressure before admitting nothing at all. 

"My parents are in town," he says.

"And?" Louis crosses his arms.

"Ehm—"

Harry’s gaze shifts as he struggles to find words and at that exact moment, Liam meaders out of the bathroom.

As if their collective minds came to the same conclusion at that exact moment, Harry makes a mad dash to the toilet, pushing Liam out of the way as Louis and Zayn try to stop the lanky brunette who manages to slam the door right at their faces.

"This is savagery!" Liam objects, banging on the bathroom door, "You can't cut your hair in the bar's bathroom, Harry!"

"Which part of ‘my parents are in town’ did you not understand?" The scraggy haired one yells back from the inside of the locked bathroom, "You think I called on a dozen tennis tour friends for a weekend membership at _Ilchester_ yesterday for nothing?"

The distress is evident in his voice. And for a moment, Zayn wonders why. Sharp collarbones, broad shoulders, and all of six feet tall, Harry Styles who is the personification unrestrained laughter, has apparently disintegrated under the pressure of having his parents come visit. But then again, Harry isn't practically an orphan like him so what does Zayn know.

"You know you can’t afford to redo the plumbing in there again, right?" Louis growls rather harshly.

His interest in keeping the bar in business well documented. No other bar would allow him to drink in exchange for balancing their books so his investment in the place evident considering the fact that he hasn't kept a long-term day job in the past year-and-the-half.

The daytime drinking might have significantly contributed to that. One way or another.

"Your hair looks fine," Zayn begins saying, unsure of where he’s even going with the sentence, "Great really, I mean, why would you butcher it just because your parents are here to visit?"

"He’s not about to take style advice from someone who dated a girl named Margaux for two years," Liam rolls his eyes, his curmudgeonly affinity taking over, "What kind of a pretentiously spelled name is that anyway? It's like Margot but spelled with A-U-X," Liam muses out loud to no one in particular.

"No more pretentious than than dating a woman who offers to clear my student loans," Zayn snaps back.

"Fellas," Louis, the unsuspecting voice of reason, barrages out loudly to focus them at the task at hand, "Literally not the time and place."

With their attention somewhat back at preventing one Harry Styles from cutting his hair over the sink in their dingy little pub bathroom and causing yet another catastrophic plumbing problem, they continue banging at the door yelling profanities at the long locked man within.

"If you guys keep going at it, I’m going to accidentally nip myself in the throat and you’ll all be charged for manslaughter which will cost a lot more than redoing the plumbing," Harry announces.

"Oh, if I were to kill you it'd be straight up murder, trust me!"

As if on cue, Niall strolls into the bar with a newspaper in hand and his gaze is immediately caught onto the three of them huddled around the bathroom door like flies caught to honey.

Liam looks over at the blonde with a shrug when he raises his brow at them.

"He’s doing it again."

With a sigh, Niall scrunches up the newspaper at hand and bangs on the door with it once, "If you’re cutting your hair in there, you’ll have to start _actually_ pay for drinks."

A surprising silence follows. In all likelihood because Harry is weighing his odds of Niall actually making him pay for drinks and the possibility of the sink regurgitating everything once he turns on the tap and cuts his hair over it like when he did it the last time.

But then the door creaks opens and Harry emerges, scissors in hand and a head full of wet hair unbutchered.

He glares at Niall and begrudgingly hands the shears over, "I expect you to let me hide that last good case of Vodka as a show of good faith."

.

.

It takes approximately two hours from when Harry leaves the bar until things start going wrong.

There’s not a single drop of Vodka to be found even though inventory says they’re supposed to have at least one more case left, their somewhat famed pork crackling might as well be renamed pork soggling because no one knew just the right way to kick the fryer to get it started, and it the speakers are going in and out of sound yet again.

The latter isn’t normally a problem that can’t be fixed without Harry’s inane set of skills because they all knew to jangle the power chord a little to get the sound up again, except they also noticed that the cord has been fraying and no one would touch it.

Harry would’ve just instigated a bet and it would’ve been a non-issue. Unless one of them actually manages to get themself electrocuted and they’d need an ambulance but that’s beside the point. The point is that Harry had been gone for all of two hours before things started going south.

And that’s a problem that needs urgent fixing. So Zayn strongarms Niall into traipsing all over town looking for the bar’s golden boy while Liam and Louis hold down the fort.

They call and they text and they leave threatening voice notes, but hear nothing back. An hour after they borderline break and enter Harry's apartment only to find him decidedly not there (and an oddly large array of mid-restoration clocks and watches), they hop onto the tube for another whole hour to head to Kensington, recalling the earlier conversation about _Ilchester_.

Niall uses his minor (but incredibly waning) golf celebrity to score them entry to the exclusive tennis clubhouse and once in, it isn’t long until they hear a series of grunts and groans often associated with the sport. A hive of not so gentle activity.

Wondering where to start as they wandered court to court, a rather stout but not unathletic middle aged man grunts rather aggressively and their heads snap instinctively towards the sound.

A shrill voice rings out within that area.

"Darling, your backhand has completely disintegrated!"

It's completely ignorable statement even coupled with sheer intensity of the voice, but it is a familiar voice that beckons back, slightly raspy and plenty tired, "Well, I do train housewives and leisure players."

"That’s really no excuse, sweetheart," cries the owner of the voice, a woman in full tennis attire from a side bench fanning herself under the sun that’s rasping it’s dying breathe for the day.

She may be calling him ‘sweetheart’ but her tone of voice is one that’s enough to send chills down one’s back.

"You’re right," Harry’s voice strains, as if it is physically painful for him to say those words, "You’re right, I’m sorry," he all but croaks meekly as they adjourn to a table in the upper deck.

They continue with conversation of some sort, less heated but the discomfort is clear in Harry's constant semi-furrowed brow.

Zayn’s hands curl into fists by his side.

He turns his head and his gaze meets Niall’s and they calm him down enough as they brace themselves for what they are about to do. Marching right up to their table, Harry almost jumps at the sight of them.

"Ah. These are some of my, ehm, clients," he starts saying unsteadily, eyes growing large as saucers, pleading for them to go with it.

"Niall here was semi-pro at golf a few years back and Zayn here is a renowned author," he turns around with a flourish to look at his parents thoroughly unimpressed expression, "He's very well regarded in the literary community."

The words make his heart climb into his throat. He opens his mouth to say something but is stopped by the waiter that arrives with glasses of juice, a pot of tea, and fancy tea-time knick knacks on a three-tiered platter.

Zayn mentally snorts at the idea of Harry drinking juice straight.

"Please, join us," says the rather stout and, upon closer review, a full head of greying hair that is Papa Styles.

"Yes, we’d love to hear more about Harry’s tennis coaching, he tells us he’s doing so well here," Mummy Styles smiles and the look she shoots them is enough to stop a baby elephant at its tracks.

Zayn feels another chill go down his back as her gaze flits back and forth between him and Niall. As though she's sizing them up in her mind and everything she subsequently says can and will shoot icicles straight you right in the heart if you let it. In a jolt, all that anxiety that came coursing out of every pore of Harry’s being that very morning begins to make sense.

The foundation of Harry’s relationship with his parents is built on the fact that they bully him into being a version of themselves that they approve of, and for some unknown reason, Harry plays along. Scared shiftless of shattering the facade that’s been built. 

The youngest Styles at the table spun around quickly and almost too cooly announcing that they can't stay.

"They have a meeting, very important," he carries on, firing on all cylinders with the lies that tumble right out, "They’re only dropping by because they want to pass me the monthly fee, which I've said can wait."

Harry faux laughs, sort of titters actually, like the way obnoxious rich people do in films. Sort of the way Zayn imagines all of the Styles’ laugh.

The layered dishonesty that Harry has kept up with his parents has Zayn’s head spinning at a dizzying rate.

"Oh, a meeting?" Mummy Styles inquires, tone of voice slightly warmed as though she might possibly believe the lies her son is selling.

“Hollywood producers,” Niall chimes in helpfully, sort of with a sort of casual nonchalance, intentionally playing along, "Zayn wrote my autobiography and they want to make a movie of it."

"Well, it was nice to meet you both," Papa Styles reaches over the table to shake their hands and the look of relief that starts to spread across Harry’s face stuns Zayn out of his stupor.

In all of Harry’s do-first-ask-questions-later attitude, he is never one to fear consequences. Every outcome is welcome, he would cry out, as though a challenge screamed out to the gods. It's something that he noticed early on. When Harry had just started coming into the bar on a regular not just to drink but to drink and charm paying patrons, they’d sit together at closing rime and talk about the future; a time where the bar won’t be in the red and they could all go make a proper life for themselves.

And they have.

_They have._

They’re not as sweepingly broke as before and they’re even earning enough to possibly need to declare their taxes the coming year all thanks to Niall's iron fist on inventory. But there Harry is, pretending to be something he's not, knuckles bruised from holding on to a lie of a life purely because he's afraid.

And twenty-three, Zayn decides, twenty-three is far too old an age to be living in the shadow of your parents especially when they have done nothing but force and shove their will onto you. Too old to be lying about a non-existent tennis career that he hates every second off. It's as though a rug is pulled out from under him and a word vomit comes spilling right out from his gut onto the table.

The bloated anger sitting in the back of his mind, ever-present since they stepped into the Styles' vantage point makes itself known, "Your son is not a tennis coach as much as I am a renowned author."

Niall is already shrinking himself into the background, fearing the onslaught of the inevitable tirade that is sure to follow.

"I _am_ a published author, with a pittance of a royalty cheque coming in every other month but nothing that’s worth boasting about. I own part of a bar with your son," Zayn announces in a single breath, in an almost gleefully angry voice, "Well technically he works for free in exchange for liquor but technicalities. It's not successful posh bar here in Kensington or in Mayfair either if you were wondering, we’re so poor that we had to stalk half his usual haunts to find him and find out where he hid that last case of Vodka."

Harry has gone rigid, taught, eyes fixed on the massacre unfolding before his eyes. His sideswept smirk that stops the heart absent, as is his chin-titled-upwards-as-a-show-of-defiance-what-you-gonna-do-about-it defensive stance.

Niall tries to salvage the situation, stepping in and hoping that the worst is over, "We’re actually not that po—"

"Oh and Harry here doesn’t drink juice by the way, not unless it’s got some Vodka mixed in. And he’s so broke that he tried to cut his hair at the bar this morning. This club membership? A weekend pass. Your mum is right by the way," Zayn shifts his attention to the man in question momentarily, "Your backhand is absolutely appalling, but that’s not the point here because what I really wanted to say is that I feel sorry for the two of you."

Zayn shifts his gaze back at the parents sitting in their stunned silence. Where he is a raging inferno blazing from miles away coming closer, closer, closer, theirs is a bed of embers simmering and threatening to engulf entire civilisations like a long dormant volcano.

"Your son is electrifying," he ploughs ahead, taking the silence as encouragement to continue, not that he needs any anyway, "He’s charming and kind. He could be anything he wants but he chooses to bartend at a shitty bar acronymed after the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis. He’s got a smile like a thousand-watt lightbulb when he means it, and he’s a brilliant, beautiful mess that you will probably never meet, and I feel sorry for you."

All his blood is rushing to his head and Zayn is frozen after finishing the equal parts cruel rebuke and declaration of unwavering loyalty to the Harry he knows. Said Harry is staring at him, silent. Except there’s something in his eyes that he can’t quite place. Like everything is suddenly stunted and muted and he’s not quite sure what he’s just witnessed.

And Zayn doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

He thinks he wants to apologise for ruining what would have otherwise be a teeth pulling (but in a lovely way kind of way) weekend for the family in front of him, wants to whisper it, dress it up in honest similes and flourish it with pretty metaphors, but no sound comes out. His mouth not quite cooperating anymore after the outburst. And so they just stand there, until the Mummy and Papa Styles gather themselves enough to leave in a huff, leaving the younger to run after them all apologetic and docile like before.

Shooting a glance backwards at his two friends left behind, Harry’s gaze fixes itself hazardously over at Zayn with the sunlight filtering down through the trees, golden light dancing on his skin.

"Do you hear yourself when you speak, by any chance?" Niall questions.

Zayn breathes in for the first time in what feels like hours, his breath caught in his throat a little, the way it does when the world is moving too fast for you to comprehend.

"I really don’t."

.

.

It’s a Friday when Zayn’s staying late at _The House of Craic_. He hasn’t stayed longer than he needed to in months even though he doesn’t really have anything better to do. It’s partly because he’s been telling himself he needs to write again, but mostly it’s because he really didn’t want to be alone with Harry since that thing that happened happened. Yet there he is, wiping the bar down and working the taps while the only other person in the place was half arsedly mopping the floor.

It’s really all remarkably normal. They haven’t addressed the incident since that fateful day and it didn’t seem likely that they were ever going to.

He's almost sure he all but imagined it all at this point, especially since Harry is going on and on about this terrible after work date that actually didn’t sound that bad (although it really did sound horrible for him but for a whole other reason) and Zayn realises that he very literally prefers to be soaked to the bone than to be verbally drenched with tales of Harry’s love life. (Especially when it doesn't involve him.)

Against his own very sound judgement, Zayn asks, "And why was it awkward that he showed up here tonight?"

"It's always awkward when you see someone after they don't see you naked," Harry grumbles, as though the most normal thing in the world.

Through his gritted teeth, he forces the next words out, "Look, he didn't want to go straight back to your place like the rest of the riff raff you walk out of here with, took your number, took an interest in your crazy time piece restoration hobby which, by the way, I still can't believe you never told us about, _and_ he came back here to see you two nights in a row. So why exactly are you planning on burning the bar down?"

"He said he wants to get to know me, know who I am," Harry grumbles as he swishes the mop around the floor, completely missing entire spots.

"And that's... bad. Obviously," Zayn sighs, the conversation boring holes into the back of his brain searing all kinds of visuals he's rather not see.

He wonders if it’s odd that he can’t feel any physical pain from this mental torture.

 _Maybe it’s what dying feels like,_ he thinks.

"I don’t know, he just—" Harry looks over at him at the bar with glazed over eyes, "He wasn't my type, I guess."

"Yeah?" Zayn plays along, throwing the rag into the sink with particular force and wringing it so tightly that his knuckles turned white, "I thought you don't discriminate? You have a type then?"

"You should know," Harry mutters, just a tone above a whisper, and Zayn literally feels his stomach fall into oblivion and he can’t feel his feet. He can’t even turn around even if he wants to.

There's a pregnant pause and the room fills with an unspoken tension.

The air in the bar is still, so still, as though they're the only living things within a ten mile vicinity. Zayn wonders if that's what it'll always be like. Wanting for things to be different but unable to do anything about it. Unable to truly look at one another even.

"Well, alright then," Harry suddenly announces to no one in particular.

"Yeah," Zayn nods into the sink. His hands are fists now, still hanging onto the rag for some reason that probably defies all logic.

He picks his head up and out of the corner of his eye, sees Harry steadily avoiding eye contact and so he gets out from the behind the counter and makes a move to the toilets. It’s a truly disgusting spot on Friday nights and he feels like throwing up anyway, so why the hell not.

Halfway across the room, he swivels around and summons up the courage to ask because he’s pretty sure he’ll go mad or commit an act of violence so terrible in the bathroom he’ll break something and they pretty much can’t afford any more plumbing work to get done, "What the hell was that exactly?"

"What?"

"'Well, alright then'?"Zayn throws his words back at him, "You can't just say something like I should know what your type is and then just veer off like that"

"I just— My therapist gave me these 3 word sentences and I—"

"You have a therapist?" Zayn blurts, unsure of where exactly this line of question is going.

"After your incredibly rousing speech at _Ilchester_ , I thought it’d be a good idea to talk to someone and right now it’s just costing money, but I told my parents the truth about tennis and how I have always fucking hated it and how I like men too so I guess it’s kind of working," Harry blathers on.

Words are tumbling out of his mouth so fast, falling to the ground and melting at their feet, that Zayn isn't quite sure what anyone's meant to do or say at this point.

And as someone who made a living putting to words how he feels, it’s suddenly as if no words had ever written.

"Right," Zayn kind of just mumbles, feeling the need to fill the awkward in-between space.

"So recently we decided to start working on my other issues and we made this list of things I could say instead of the other 3 words that I actually want to say because I’m not good for anyone right now and—"

And then it hits him. Mid-sentence, without even allowing Harry the same courtesy that he was extended on the tennis court the other day, Zayn drops the rag and surges forward planting his face squarely on Harry’s.

Nine months. Nine months and a split second of pure nerve is all it took for Zayn Malik to become completely unraveled.

Nine months and all he wants is to feel Harry’s heart beating under his hands.

The kiss feels like something wildly unruly. Something unlike everything else, the want having been suppressed for so long, because he thinks he does not deserve it.

He pulls back and Harry’s eyes open with uncertainty painted under his lids. Like everything is an unknown marvel, soft and incandescent.

It's eerily silence and his pulse is all he hears, thundering in the background.

"You know, now would be a good time to say something in case I’ve misread everything and—"

"You’re the type," Harry cuts in decisively, lips and cheeks flushed pink, "You’re literally the only one that’s my type. I didn't know it until that day in the tennis court but now I do."

"Oh," Zayn breathes out insufficiently.

Despite the rain and the dark and the whole other world outside the stupidly named pub, nothing else seems to exist. Beyond the two of them, nothing seems to matter. But Zayn barely has a moment, barely has a moment to catch his breath because everything in the world stops when Harry is looking at him like that.

They all but crash into one another again, all lips and teeth and tongue.

Immediately Zayn is overcome by a taste sweet like berries and sharp peppermint that sticks in the lungs. It reminds him of pastel coloured swirl ice-cream on a summer day. And he's everywhere, flashing beneath his closed eyes, fingernails digging into his back, skin on skin soft and rough and roguish all at once.

Zayn wouldn’t be surprised if he floated away.

Pieces of clothing are discarded, one at a time then all at once, every layer is ripped until there’s nothing between them but skin on skin and Zayn wants to memorise it all. There’s a slow consciousness in his head growing to concrete, as though the Harry is simply etched in the back of his brain.

As though he’s dreaming without knowing it.

He almost laughs, because he’s so hopelessly and undeniably fucked. But the truth is, Zayn wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
